Mosaix PDX: Blog The Art of Spiritual Fruitfulness by Dave Martin

When Jesus spoke of being the vine and his followers being the branches, he chose an agricultural metaphor that would have resonated deeply with his first-century audience. Today, as we wrestle with what it means to bear fruit in our spiritual lives — both individually and as communities of faith — we might find fresh insight by looking not to the traditional grapevine, but to the humble blackberry bush.

Anyone who has ever maintained a blackberry patch knows the demanding rhythm of cultivation it requires. The difference between wild blackberries and carefully tended ones tells a story that mirrors our journey as disciples of Jesus.

The Wild Growth Problem

Walk along any country road in late summer and you'll likely encounter sprawling blackberry thickets. These untamed patches produce fruit, yes, but at what cost? The berries are small, sparse, and hidden beneath layers of thorny growth. Harvesting requires battle gear — thick gloves, long sleeves, and the patience to fight through dense, unruly canes for a handful of modest berries.

How often does our spiritual life resemble this wild growth? We experience seasons of intense activity and apparent productivity, yet find ourselves exhausted and scratched up, with little substantial fruit to show for our efforts. We may be busy with religious activities, consuming spiritual content, attending events, and engaging in countless good works. But without intentional cultivation, this growth can become as tangled and unproductive as an abandoned blackberry patch.

The problem isn't activity itself — it's unexamined, undisciplined activity. Like wild blackberry canes that shoot off in every direction, our spiritual lives can become cluttered with secondary pursuits that drain our energy without producing lasting fruit.

The Discipline of Pruning

The blackberry farmer knows a secret that transforms everything: ruthless pruning. Up to 90% of new growth must be cut away each season. Only the strongest, most promising canes are retained and carefully trained along the trellis system. This seems counterintuitive — how can cutting away so much growth lead to greater fruitfulness?

The answer lies in understanding what fruit actually requires. A blackberry plant has finite resources. Every unnecessary cane that's allowed to grow diverts nutrients, water, and energy away from the branches that will actually bear fruit. The farmer's seemingly harsh pruning is actually an act of love — protecting the plant's capacity to fulfill its true purpose.

In our spiritual lives, this principle translates into the difficult but necessary practice of saying no. We must learn to distinguish between the merely good and the genuinely fruitful. This might mean stepping back from committee involvement that has become routine rather than Spirit-led. It could involve reducing our consumption of spiritual content — books, podcasts, conferences — that stimulate but don't actually nourish. It may require the courage to prune relationships or activities that have grown beyond their proper place in our lives.

The goal isn't minimalism for its own sake but focus for the sake of fruitfulness. When we allow God to prune away the excess, we create space for the kind of deep, sustained spiritual growth that actually produces lasting fruit.

The Trellis of Community

Individual blackberry canes, no matter how healthy, cannot support themselves under the weight of abundant fruit. The farmer provides a trellis system — a framework of posts and wires that gives structure and support to the growing plant. Without this support, even the most carefully pruned canes will collapse under their own productivity.

This reveals a crucial truth about spiritual fruitfulness: it's not meant to be a solo endeavor. We need the trellis of authentic Christian community to support our growth and bear the weight of the fruit God intends to produce through us. Side note: might this help us understand the fall of so many highly productive spiritual leaders in recent years?

In healthy spiritual community, we find several elements that mirror the blackberry trellis:

Structural Support: Just as the trellis provides a framework for growth, mature believers and wise spiritual practices provide structure for our developing faith. Regular worship, accountability relationships, and submission to biblical teaching create the framework within which spiritual fruit can develop safely.

Shared Load: When individual believers attempt to carry the full weight of ministry or spiritual responsibility alone, they often break under the pressure. Community allows us to share both the labor of spiritual work and the joy of spiritual harvest.

Guided Direction: The trellis doesn't just support; it guides growth in productive directions. Similarly, spiritual community helps direct our energy and gifts toward their most fruitful expression, preventing the kind of scattered growth that characterizes spiritual immaturity.

Tending the Soil of the Heart

Even the best pruning and trellis system cannot compensate for poor soil. The blackberry farmer pays careful attention to soil health — testing pH levels, adding organic matter, ensuring proper drainage. The condition of the soil determines not just whether the plant survives, but whether it thrives.

Our hearts are the soil of our spiritual lives. Jesus himself used this metaphor in the parable of the sower, describing how the same seed produces vastly different results depending on the condition of the soil where it lands. Tending the soil of our hearts requires ongoing attention to several key areas:

Confession and Repentance: Just as soil needs regular cultivation to remain soft and receptive, our hearts need the regular turning that comes through honest confession and genuine repentance. Unconfessed sin hardens the heart like compacted soil, making it difficult for God's Word to take root.

Spiritual Disciplines: Prayer, Bible study, fasting, and other spiritual disciplines are like adding nutrients to the soil. They don't produce fruit directly, but they create the conditions where fruit can flourish.

Rest and Sabbath: Even the richest soil needs seasons of rest. The practice of Sabbath and the rhythm of spiritual seasons allow our hearts to remain receptive rather than becoming exhausted and depleted.

The Harvest Mentality

Perhaps the most significant difference between wild and cultivated blackberries lies in accessibility. Wild berries are scattered, hidden, and difficult to gather. Cultivated berries grow in clusters, at convenient heights, easily visible and readily accessible to anyone who approaches the bush.

This reveals something profound about the nature of spiritual fruitfulness. The fruit we're called to bear isn't meant to be private or hidden. It should be accessible to others — visible evidence of God's transforming work that draws people toward him rather than toward us.

When our spiritual lives are properly cultivated, the fruit becomes apparent not through self-promotion or performance, but through the natural overflow of a life rooted in Christ.

The Bible speaks of fruit in at least three important ways:

The beautiful fruit of Christlike character (Galatians 5:22-23).
The nourishing fruit of love and good deeds (Colossians 1:10; Hebrews 10:24).
The multiplied fruit of more trees – more reproducing disciples (Psalm 1:3; John 15:5, 8).

The Community Harvest

Individual blackberry bushes may produce fruit, but blackberry farms are designed for community harvest. The rows are spaced to allow multiple pickers to work side by side. The harvest becomes a shared celebration, with everyone contributing to and benefiting from the collective effort.

Similarly, spiritual fruitfulness reaches its fullest expression in community. When believers are properly rooted, pruned, and supported, their individual fruitfulness contributes to a community harvest that benefits everyone involved. The church becomes not just a collection of individual fruit-bearers, but a unified field where the combined harvest exceeds what individuals could produce alone.

This community dimension of fruitfulness manifests in several ways:

Mutual Encouragement: The fruit of one believer's faithfulness becomes nourishment for another's growth. Stories of God's goodness, testimonies of answered prayer, and examples of spiritual maturity create a harvest that feeds the entire community.

Complementary Gifts: Just as different varieties of blackberries ripen at different times, extending the harvest season, different believers produce different types of spiritual fruit that complement each other, creating a more abundant and varied harvest for the community.

Multiplication: The ultimate goal of any fruit is reproduction. Spiritual fruitfulness naturally leads to the multiplication of disciples, as the harvest of one generation becomes the seed for the next.

The Patient Farmer

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of blackberry cultivation is the patience it requires. A new blackberry plant may take two to three years to produce significant fruit. Even established plants require consistent care throughout the growing season, with the harvest concentrated in just a few weeks of the year.

This timeline challenges our culture's expectation of immediate results. Spiritual fruitfulness, like agricultural fruitfulness, operates on God's timeline rather than our own. The farmer who checks his plants daily for signs of premature fruit will be disappointed. The farmer who faithfully tends, prunes, and waits will eventually enjoy an abundant harvest.

Our role as disciples is to be faithful farmers of our own souls and patient cultivators of community fruitfulness. We plant, we water, we prune, we wait — but God gives the growth. The fruit that eventually emerges is the result of both our faithful labor and the gift of God's grace.

Conclusion: The Well-Tended Life

The difference between wild blackberries and cultivated ones ultimately comes down to intentionality. Wild berries grow wherever conditions allow, producing modest fruit through sheer persistence. Cultivated berries grow where they're planted, pruned according to wisdom, supported by design, and tended with purpose.

As disciples of Jesus, we have a choice. We can allow our spiritual lives to grow wild — busy, scattered, producing some fruit but requiring enormous effort to harvest it. Or we can submit to the careful cultivation that produces the kind of abundant, accessible fruit that nourishes both ourselves and our communities.

The well-tended life requires the courage to be pruned, the humility to accept support, and the patience to wait for God's timing. But it also promises the joy of harvest — the deep satisfaction of seeing our lives produce fruit that remains, fruit that feeds others, fruit that brings glory to the One who is the true vine.

In the end, spiritual fruitfulness isn't about working harder or doing more. It's about being more intentional, more submitted, and more patient as we allow the Master Gardener to do his work in us and through us. The harvest he has in mind far exceeds anything we could produce on our own — if we're willing to be well-tended branches in his vineyard.

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(The views expressed in blog posts are those of the authors of the posts. They do not reflect an official position of Mosaix PDX, but are intended to promote thinking and constructive interaction. We welcome differing viewpoints.)

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